Today, users may often use multiple computing devices, such as mobile computing devices and desktop computing devices. In addition, such users may utilize multiple instances of an application on these computing devices. For example, instances of a media library application (e.g., iTunes®) may be loaded onto a tablet computer, a smartphone and a desktop computer. In this way, the user may have access to the same application and/or application data on multiple devices.
As a result of having multiple instances of an application on multiple devices, the content of the application on each device needs to be synchronized in order for the user to be provided with a seamless and consistent experience. That is, the content for each of the instances of the application needs to be synchronized in order for each application to perform consistently regardless of which device the user is using. For example, if content has been added, deleted or updated for one of the instances of the application, then such content needs to be synchronized with the other instances of the application.
Currently, a computing device (e.g., smartphone) can be wirelessly synced with another computing device (e.g., desktop computer) in order to synchronize the content. However, the computing device (e.g., smartphone) is required to be plugged into a power source in order to be wirelessly synced with the other computing device. The computing device is required to be plugged into a power source in order to wirelessly sync content as the computing device can end up in a “bad” state if power disappears during the synchronization of the content. However, since the computing device is required to be plugged into a power source, it would not be much of an issue to also use a sync cable to synchronize data contained on these two devices. Hence, the benefit of wirelessly syncing content between two devices is greatly lessened.
Furthermore, a power cable may easily become disconnected with the computing device, such as by accidentally tripping over the cable or picking up a mobile computing device to check the status of the synchronization causing the power cable to be unplugged from the power source. Furthermore, a power outage may occur. Hence, the computing device may still end up in a “bad” state even if the computing device was originally plugged into a power source. As a result, the requirement of connecting the computing device to a power source in order to wirelessly sync content has many drawbacks.